READING FOR 9TH : THE AMERICANS

READING FOR 9TH

THE AMERICANS

When asked about the Americans, most Europeans will probably say they are all fat, speak too loud, dress very badly, drive huge cars and eat beef for breakfast, lunch and dinner, followed by enormous ice-creams topped with lots of whipped cream. They will add that they are all very rich and live in very big houses.

It’s clear that the Europeans who think the Americans are like that have never been to America. I can’t agree with this stereotyped description of my fellow citizens. It’s true that we can come across lots of fat people when we travel through America. But it is equally true that most of us are quite normal and there are even a few, especially young women and teenagers, that are very thin.

Did you say all Americans are rich? A big surprise for Europeans touring America is exactly the large number of poor people they see, especially in very large cities. Unfortunately, too many Americans live below the poverty line due to unemployment or other social reasons. We often see men and women looking for food in trash cans or sleeping in the street or on park benches.

America is a country of contrasts: there are extremely rich and extremely poor people; somewhere in between are the rest of us – the middle class, treasuring life’s little joys and sharing our families’ and our friends’ sorrows just like everyone else all over the world.

The difference between the Americans and people from most European countries is that there are more of us and we have many different origins; so we have more fat people, more loud people, more rich people and probably more varieties of ice cream. Remember it is always dangerous to believe in stereotypes. After all, you wouldn’t like to be thought of as one of the oliver-skinned, lazy Portuguese, would you?